While being directly quoted is flattering as all hell, being stolen from is not. When your words are stolen by a member of the Dervaes Family and used as their own, it is even more flattering in a roundabout way.  How is it that the family who are the self-proclaimed founders of the urban homestead movement couldn’t even find the original words to describe what they do? 

Under ordinary circumstances I might have chosen to contact the Dervaes Family and quietly attempt to settle the matter but given their penchant for threatening letters and frivolous trademark registrations as well as their reputation for being terribly difficult to deal with directly, I made the decision to bring this problem to the public so that everyone might see just what this family will do when they think no one is watching.

Let’s begin:

Presenting The Evidence

I was contacted this morning by a commenter to my article “Bring Back Victory Gardens” [see also: Exhibit A] originally posted to this site in April of 2008 and updated on January 25, 2011.  The commenter informed me that parts of this article had been lifted verbatim and were being used by the Dervaes Family on their website.  The commenter further provided me with a link to the page.

NOTE:  You can see the original comments on that piece were left in May of 2008 if you scroll to the bottom of the page.

That information led me to visit Copyscape, a website that searches for plagiarism on the Internet.  EXHIBIT B is a screen capture that shows what was revealed in that search.  As you will see there are 5 pages that have directly copied my content.  The first is the HubPages site that I mentioned earlier and is my property.  The other four are penned/stolen by a member of the Dervaes Family.

According to this link from the Internet Archive [see also: EXHIBIT C] my original article was posted online at some point in time prior to June 7, 2008 and was also screen capped by the Archive on July 23rd and August 3rd of that same year, both prior to this posting [see also: EXHIBIT D]made by Anais Dervaes on August 11, 2008, a full three months after the first Internet Archive capture. That blog post entitled “FUTURE OF URBAN AGRICULTURE” (in all caps) directly matches the name of the Facebook page from EXHIBIT B that is no longer available, leading me to believe that it was likely the Dervaes Family – and more specifically Anais Dervaes – who set up that Facebook page and added the stolen content there as well before taking the page down.

This is the same family who insisted that Facebook take down established pages that used their trademarked phrase “urban homestead”.  Funny, but I don’t see how they can not be aware of what they are doing.  It just appears that they somehow believe themselves to be immune.  Unfortunately, they are wrong.

But wait, there’s more.

EXHIBIT E shows the main ABOUT page from the family’s Freedom Gardens (insert registered trademark thingie here) website.  The same paragraph was lifted, again verbatim and without attribution.  Still not convinced?  What about EXHIBIT F, where they did it again?

Finally, I leave you with the final screen cap, from the website of Dervaes Family Patriarch himself, Jules Dervaes.  You would think that an “Urban Farmer, Speaker, Founder of the Urban Homestead Movement” would be able to come up with original content when describing the topics about which he is available to speak [see also: EXHIBIT G].  Sadly, he needed to use a sentence that I wrote instead of writing one himself. 

What Should I Get Out of This?

Perhaps I should be getting some of these public speaking requests? 

Wonder if I should I be entitled to royalties from those speeches, or if I can add “Speech Writer for Jules Dervaes” to my resume? 

It seems as though I should be entitled to some restitution seeing as I am a writer by trade and they are using work that I penned and should thus receive remuneration for.  Best I can tell, their family has been receiving the benefit of my services for 935 days and I have as yet received no payment for those services rendered.  At my going rate for contract writing I should have been paid $250 for each use of my work.

4 uses: $1,000

Because I did not receive payment for that work within my standard Net 30 time period, a late payment fee of 25% is assessed for each week the payment is late.  That means my payment is, to date, 129 weeks late.

+129 weeks @ 25% late payment fee: $1,856.17* (see comment below for just how screwed up my math is here)

+mental cruelty, pain and suffering, loss of wages: PRICELESS

Okay, so I’ve been watching too many court shows lately but I think my point has been made. I’m also pretty sure my math is off but what do you expect, I’m a writer.  I’m no good at math, I’m good at words.  So good that even the mighty Dervaes Family feels the need to steal them.

In all seriousness, my work has been stolen and I feel that I should be paid for that.  I have only placed this blog post on my public site to document the instances of theft adequately enough that I have legal grounds for further action should I deem them necessary.

Listen Up, Dervaes Family

You have bullied the gardening and urban homesteading community long enough.  I’m not bothering with a cease and desist letter because it is far more satisfying to expose you for the unoriginal frauds that you are and let the people decide who they want to believe.  Thankfully I have been a part of this community long enough to know that its members are not the sheep you take them for and your time of pulling the wool over their eyes has come and gone.

Sincerely,

Michael Nolan

EDITED TO ADD: In an ironic twist, Dervaes Family Member Justin (do I need a trademark symbol here?) wrote this blog post on plagiarism somehow preaching about it and its impact just a few days ago.  Maybe he should converse with his sister…

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“We have now secured registered trademarks for certain unique names and images.”

How is “urban homestead” a unique name and on what basis do you claim origination and ownership of said phrase?

“By protecting our intellectual property we are better able to ensure that our work is presented accurately and contributes to our sustainable living projects and educational initiatives.”

• URBAN HOMESTEAD®

• URBAN HOMESTEADING®

• PATH TO FREEDOM®

• GROW THE FUTURE®

• HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION®

• FREEDOM GARDENS®

• LITTLE HOMESTEAD IN THE CITY®

How is someone else using the phrase “urban homestead” or “urban homesteading” in any way impinging upon your sustainable living projects or educational initiatives? 

You did not create this way of life, Dervaes Family.  You merely did it and drew attention to that fact.  It has all been done before.  Again: your “ideas” are not original.  Neither is your obvious grab for the spotlight.

“If your use of one of these phrases is not to specifically identify products or services from the Dervaes Institute, then it would be proper to use generic terms to replace the registered trademark you are using.”

Oh, so if I’ don’t give a damn about you or your self-important posturing, then I can say urban homestead all day long without a registered trademark symbol?  Imagine that.

Thank you in advance for respecting our legally protected intellectual property rights. If you have been supportive of our ten-year online work in the past, we appreciate very much your continued support.

Yes, I had been supportive of the Dervaes family’s work for many years.  No, I will not support it in any fashion going forward. With the backlash in the past 24 hours they are becoming more aware of just how ridiculous their actions have been.  They are learning that you do not step on the toes of the people who made you what you are and expect to not hear them scream.

We will not let this go, Dervaes Family.  Just because you were leaders does not mean that leaders cannot and should not fall when they lose their frakking minds.

If you would like more information on what the Dervaes family is up to, here is how to contact them:

“If you have any questions regarding the use of Dervaes materials or trademarks, please contact us at (626) 795-8400. We would be glad to provide you with more details.”

See also: Trademarks, Patents & Thieves, OH MY!

Quotes above taken from this source.

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I hope you enjoy it and feel free to comment there.

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Bring Back Victory Gardens

In response to the heavy impact of World War II on the U.S. economy, Americans were urged to grow a victory garden (also called a war garden) in 1943. The gardens were planted by about 20 million families and would eventually provide nearly half of the fresh produce consumed during this troubled time. On rooftops, in back yards and even in containers on front porches, Americans produced eight million tons of fruit, vegetables and herbs in their own households.

In 2008, we are once again taking part in a devastating war and once again our economy is in crisis. Our administration still seems oblivious to the profound financial problems with our country as thousands of hard working people are threatened with foreclosure.

New home sales have plummeted more than 26 percent since 2006 and more than 405,000 people lost their homes in 2007 alone. The seemingly never ending rise in the price of oil may be making oil companies record-breaking profits but it is pushing our country’s economy closer and closer toward another Depression.

The cost of nearly everything on the market these days has increased so much that many families are forced to do without the basic necessities in a vain attempt at making ends meet.

The situation may be complicated, but the average American does not want to understand the politics behind why they can’t afford to feed their families, they just want to eat. It is for this very reason that I offer this solution: Bring Back the Victory Gardens.

If you consider it for a moment, it makes perfect sense. Seeds are inexpensively purchased and with the power of the Internet at our disposal, seed exchanging can be done for just the cost of a stamp. I am personally growing a huge variety of heirloom tomatoes from seeds that I received through my local Freecycle mailing list as well as cucumbers, carrots, onions, green beans and several other easy-to-grow vegetables.

You might think that you need a large amount of space or a lot of money to grow your own vegetables, but I’m here to tell you that it does not have to cost much at all. So far this year I have spent less than $25 on my gardening endeavors and I could have actually done it for much less than that.

While I do have a good sized back yard, I am growing the majority of this year’s produce in containers in order to not only better educate myself about container gardening, but to conserve water as my state of Alabama has been in a state of drought conditions for two years now.

Grow what you use
As I mentioned previously, I am growing a lot of tomatoes this year. Tomatoes happen to be my favorite produce item and I go through several pounds a week. With the average price for a pound of tomatoes at about $2.00, you can imagine how much money I’ll be saving over the course of the year. The tomatoes that are not immediately used will be canned or frozen for use during the winter and early spring months, when others will be paying incredibly high prices for the anemic, pale and tasteless hot house tomatoes offered by the supermarkets during the off season.

If you are new to gardening, start small by picking just one or two of your favorite vegetables and growing them in a container. My tomatoes this year will be grown in 5-gallon buckets that I also acquired for free from Freecycle. If you have limited space, two or three container plants on your back porch will be easy and inexpensive to maintain and won’t take up much of your precious square footage either.

For an expenditure of less than $10.00, you could grow enough produce to feed you and your family throughout the season and for an average sized family of four, that could quickly equate to hundreds of dollars in savings over the course of the year.

It is an election year and the economy may be a primary issue in the stump speeches we see and hear all over the news, but while the politicians are busy talking it is time that we stop talking and get something done.

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I’ve always known in my heart that if I could just have a small farm I could provide for nearly all of my needs and though I still believe that, it is simply not something that happens because you wish it into being.  My move happened on June 1st which is not the ideal time in Alabama to try to prepare an area for gardening that had been untouched for at least several decades prior.  The tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash and okra all failed miserably, leaving me with nothing to can for the Winter and precious little to talk about to my gardening readers.

The big fat vegetable failure, coupled with the daily struggles of being a freelance writer worked in tandem to make things financially difficult as Autumn set in and I began to feel sorry for myself, thinking This is not the way it is supposed to be!  I’m a damn good writer and an even better gardener!

It was my friend Andrew Odom who helped me to realize just this morning where the real roadblock was.  In a blog post he penned on the topic of success, Drew helped to remind me that what I was doing was confusing enlightenment with entitlement.  I was feeling entitled to a successful farm because I have the knowledge to make it successful.  In other words, the farm was supposed to be a success because people look to me as an expert on the very things that I failed at this year and that just wasn’t fair.

As I write this message I am typing on a computer that I paid more than $1,000 for, sitting at a nice desk I paid good money for.  The expensive camera, laptop, color printer, Blackberry, even the overpriced Ott-Lite that are all on my desk all seem to be forgotten when I beat myself up over the money problems I am currently faced with.  I’m entitled to all of those things, right?

I’m never again going to have a lot of money.  It is likely that every month is going to be a race to see if the paycheck can beat the creditors to my bank account.  That doesn’t make me a failure and it doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard.

The harsh reality is that the life and career path I have chosen are uncertain by their very nature and I knew that going in.  I often have to work twice as hard at my job for half the money and even though I give 100% at all times, some of the writing I felt would be the most well received is wholly ignored.  And you know what?  That’s okay!

This morning I rediscovered my path toward enlightenment.  It doesn’t mean I’ve attained any great and wonderful state of being, just that I am a little more at peace with the knowledge that making mistakes is not the same as being a failure.  As long as I am making mistakes and learning from them, I’m growing.  And as long as I’m growing, I’m a success.

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This is a project I have wanted to do for quite some time and yesterday I finally did it. Making your own laundry detergent at home is not only simple, it is a great way to reduce the amount of phosphates and other harsh chemicals we are adding to the environment every time we wash a load of clothes. Better still, homemade laundry detergent is inexpensive and doesn’t take much of your time either.

Possibly the best incentive is for those who may have allergies to additives in many commercial laundry detergents. This stuff is about as natural as you can get!

All of the ingredients you need for homemade laundry detergent are shown in the photo above. I purchased all three ingredients – which are enough to make three separate batches of laundry detergent – for less than the cost of a large bottle of our regular High Efficiency (HE) detergent.

• Borax
• Washing Soda
• Bar Soap

The Washing Soda may prove difficult to find in some areas, but it can be purchased online easily if you can’t locate it locally.

My Recipe

• 2 cups Borax
• 2 cups Washing Soda
• 1 regular sized bar of soap (I used Ivory, but Fels Naptha or homemade bar soap will work)

This recipe is for dry laundry detergent, so instead of melting the soap you need to shred it somehow. I have seen every imaginable trick in the book for this from a cheese grater to a food processor but my way is the easiest, fastest and to be honest, the most fun!

This fluffy stuff isn’t a fresh meringue, it is what happens to a bar of soap when you put it in the microwave for 90 seconds! Now it can at times go a little crazy but the good news is that it is soap, so cleaning it up will just leave your microwave sparkling inside!

When you have finished microwaving the bar of soap it will be quite dry and brittle, which is exactly what you want.

I finish by adding the dried soap fluff along with a cup of Borax and Washing Soda to my Vita-Mix and mixing it on medium speed until thoroughly powdered and combined.

Then add the remaining ingredients, mix again and voila! you’re done!

It all sounds great but the real test is in how the stuff works, right? Well that’s the best news of all!

So far I have tested two loads of laundry with this recipe and so far, washing a load of bed sheets and a load of moderately soiled clothes have given great results. The results will be tested further this weekend when I wash some heavily soiled clothes after some work on the farm. I will of report my findings here as soon as I have more info!

NOTE: There has been some question as to whether homemade laundry detergent will work in a high efficiency machine. The recipe works perfectly in a HE washing machine and I only use 2 tablespoons of detergent per regular sized load!  That is 1 ounce of detergent per load, which means each batch will wash 32 loads of clothes.

You will notice immediately that clothes washed with this detergent will not be perfumed in any way and while that may take a little getting used to, I personally love the undeniable smell of clean without perfumes.

UPDATE #1: I have now washed several loads with this homemade detergent including my first load of whites and I have to say that I am truly impressed.  The last major test will be over the weekend when I wash heavily soiled work clothes but so far I couldn’t be happier.

UPDATE #2 (8/30/10): This homemade laundry detergent has met and exceeded all expectations and is still in use nearly a month later.

Based on a conservative estimate of being able to make three batches or 96 ounces of detergent, the cost per load is 7.5¢.

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I first learned about the odd ownership situation while researching a particular carrot variety that I was given as a gift over the holidays.  That led me to this post on Homegrown Evolution about the precocious Purple Dragon carrot.  A follow up post on the same website offers more information from people on both sides of the argument and can be found here.

As for me, I have made a conscious decision to give my business to good companies doing good things, not the good things that bad companies are doing in the name of public relations while it is the in thing.  As a result, I will buy seeds from other sources and continue my own seed saving and seed trading efforts to ensure that private people still have open pollinated, genetically pure seed from which to feed their families.

If you are not yet a member of the Seed Savers Exchange, I strongly recommend it.  Even if you don’t become a member you have access to thousands of great seeds through their online store, but as the site touts, members have access to 12,613 more varieties!

What are your favorite sources for organic heirloom seeds?  Leave a comment and be sure to include a link!

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Ever since childhood I have had one true love from the garden – tomatoes.  In the interest of full disclosure there isn’t much from the garden that I don’t adore but tomatoes grow at home have a noted advantage over anything you can buy in the supermarket; it’s called taste.

After our recent trip to Portland I returned home to a huge number of my beloved heirloom tomatoes ready for picking even after asking neighbors to take whatever they could use.  The colander was overflowing with gorgeous ripe heirloom tomatoes from six different varieties and I was ready to make sure I didn’t lose a single one!

One particularly beautiful specimen was sliced and found its way onto our breakfast plates this morning while the rest (as seen in the photo above) were chopped and pureed, combined with a healthy bunch of fresh picked herbs, peppers and onions and are now simmering the rainy afternoon away in my crock pot.

There are lots of recipes and schools of thought about how to make this or that the right way but to be honest I am almost entirely self-taught in the kitchen and I have discovered that the only right way is the way that works best for you.  If you are the type who feels more comfortable following recipes to the letter then by all means, do it!

I tend to be the look-cook-taste type, meaning that I look at a recipe to see what the general ingredients list is like then I combine the ingredients my way, tasting as I go and adding a bit more of whatever my taste buds tell me is called for.  That said, here are the ingredients in my crock pot tomato sauce and the general guidelines for how I make it happen:

INGREDIENTS (give or take)

• tomatoes
• onion
• peppers (I use both sweet and hot)
• olive oil
• oregano
• sage
• parsley
• garlic
• coarse sea salt
• peppercorns

INSTRUCTIONS (kinda)

First let me say that I don’t remove the skin or the seeds from my tomatoes because I puree them in my Vita-Mix and by the time they make it to my crock pot or sauce pan there is most often no indication of skin or seeds.  Even when I make salsa I leave the tomato skin and seeds intact.

1. Start by adding a Tablespoon or so of olive oil to the crock pot, covering it and turning it on high while you process the ingredients.
2. Coarsely chop tomatoes and onion and toss them in the Vita-Mix, blender or food processor and process until smooth along with your herbs, peppers and peppercorns.  You may have to do this in batches (in my case I filled the Vita-Mix container three times).
3. Add the pureed ingredients to the crock pot along with a good pinch of sea salt and cover.  Cook on high, stirring occasionally and cook until it has reduced and thickened.  This process takes a long time but it is well worth the lack of effort that is required.  In other words you don’t have to do anything but stir it every so often so quit complaining.

That’s really all there is to it, folks.  You can then let the mixture cool and can it or pour it into large zipper bags and freeze it for an ultra-fast meal in minutes anytime.

UPDATE

Wanted to do a quick update to give you a glimpse of the finished product.  First, here is the sauce while it was cooking down in the crock pot after about 12 hours:

And now a shot of my finished sauce bagged up and ready to be frozen:

Footnote:  If you’ve been on the fence about spending the money on a Vita-Mix, you can use the Vita-Mix coupon code 06-004453 to get free shipping in the U.S. and Canada (a $25 savings), or just click here.  If you would rather order by phone, call 1-800-848-2649 and ask for Sue at ext. 2308.  Give her the coupon code above and tell her Michael sent ya!

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Especially when they are like the USDA Zone Map when I need to know what the outline of my county looks like to know if I am in a particular planting zone.  If I am being honest, I don’t even know what the name of my county is, much less what it looks like on the map!  Still, there is a lot of important information to be gleaned from knowing your planting zone so there has to be an easier way, right?  Right!

The National Gardening Association has created a section of their website that is tailor made for people like me who can barely even point to the state I live in (that’s the state of Georgia, not the state of confusion).  See, all you have to do is go here and enter your zip code.  Not only will this site tell you what your planting zone is, it will also give you a regional report, a link to public gardens and events in your zip code and even a list of plants that work in your zone.

(HINT: if you don’t know your zip code, look at a piece of junk mail.)

For more information, visit the National Gardening Association’s USDA Hardiness Zone Finder on the web at garden.org/zipzone

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I have to admit it is nice to get credit for my online writing!  All too often people have a false sense that anything they find on the Internet belongs to them and they have no need to give credit where credit is due.  While I am an avid gardener I make my money as a freelance writer and a large portion of that is done online.  When people steal the work of other writers like myself they devalue the hard work that we put into what we do.

Thank you to Dr. Carter for crediting my work in her great piece on urban gardening.  I encourage you all to check it out!

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